A Lack of Color
by patster223
Summary: Colour is what connects the different phases of John's life. They connect Afghanistan and the bullet wound in his shoulder and his time home from the war, but most of all, they connect to Sherlock.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own Sherlock

A John introspective.

In truth, John didn't see the world in colour. Not anymore. Those days it was mostly shades of grey, extensions of black and white all blurred together.

John _used_ to see in colour. Yes, he could remember it quite clearly. He could remember coming to Afghanistan and seeing the sky. The very first thing he saw there was the sky. It was the exact same one that he'd seen all the way back home as a city boy in London, except on that day, on that particular day, there were no clouds to obstruct it from his view, like there so often were at home. On that day the sky was simply the sky. An overwhelming mass of blue stretched over him, a vast emptiness.

He loved it.

But it wasn't just blue he saw in Afghanistan. No, there was also red (_Bullets flying over his head, a mass of sound and colour all mixed together into a scene of chaos_), so many different variations of red (_screaming screaming screaming that's all he heard was scre-_). John wasn't as much of a fan of the red (_his shoulder was staining his uniform in the colour, and he was drowning in the colour_). No, wasn't much of a fan at all.

He saw it all so very clearly in those first months, all the blue and red and red and blue and then-

(_And there were more colours, ones that John was familiar with as a doctor, but that he'd never seen in such horror. It was pale white skin, covered with brown, grainy dirt, and there were the faded green uniforms, but all of this was just a backdrop against red red red, and all he could do was try to wipe it away and find the soldiers underneath it_)

It was just easier to forget the colour. In this world, there was black and white, but more often grey, and that was simple and easy and the way John liked it.

Yes, he liked it much better than the colour. Drab and boring and ordinary. A black and white film to be enjoyed on a slow afternoon; enjoyed, but forgotten about soon after.

A black and white film. Yeah, that sounded about right. After the army, John lived in a black and white film.

It wasn't that black and white movies were bad. No, they could be funny, or amusing, or tragic, or heartrending. But after years of colour and blues and reds, suddenly being thrust into an old fashioned film turned out to not be as comforting as he had hoped.

But black and white was easy, even if it was dreadfully dull (even if Nothing ever happened to him), so he kept going along, or tried to at least, but really, John wasn't meant for a life of grey.

So perhaps it was a relief when he met the man named Sherlock Holmes, a name straight out of the sort of black and white film he was starring in.

Except Sherlock wasn't a man of black and white, right or wrong, good or bad. Mainly because he didn't care for either side of that particular colour spectrum, nor did he care to see the world in ordinary colour like everyone else.

No, Sherlock Holmes saw above colour and black and white and grey and blues and reds, because where other people only saw, he _observed_, he _deduced_. Such a man didn't have time to worry about things like how ordinary people were supposed to view the world.

He was the opposite of ordinary in fact. If John was an enjoyable black and white film, then Sherlock was that summer blockbuster everyone had been lining up at the theater to see (sometimes he disappointed the masses, letting down the people who had anticipated him as so much more. But other times he was a hit, the Amazing Sherlock Holmes, the one and only consulting detective that lived up to everyone's expectations when he finally solved the crime. It didn't matter to him either way, but in truth, the first reaction was the most common, John being the exception). He was the sort of person who had adventures and rooftop chases and archenemies (because apparently they existed in Sherlock's sort of world).

John would roll his eyes if you compared the two of them this way, but in truth, he got carried away in Sherlock's adventure too, because how could you not?

And then, suddenly, there was colour again. Sherlock tore him away from his world of safety (of boredom, of black and white dullness) and he was thrust into some sort of ridiculous adventure, the sort of thing that couldn't _actually_ happen in real life, but John wasn't about to complain, because he loved _this_.

Or, perhaps it wasn't so sudden. It could have been a subtler thing. Maybe instead John woke up one day and saw that all the sweaters he'd been buying were the beige of a black and white life. Maybe he was laughing one day, chuckling quietly as he and Sherlock recovered from a chase, and he noticed for the first time that his flatmate's scarf was a deep blue; that his eyes were blue too, though not as much; and that he had pale skin, pale pale skin.

John felt sadness, but he didn't bury it underneath black and white for once, and just felt it, and then he was happy again, seeing slight tints of colour where he once only saw grey.

It was the first sign (the first? The hundredth? It was a sign, surely, and that was all that mattered) that life with Sherlock would be anything but ordinary. And not altogether painless, John noted, when he heard that 221B had been bombed and realised that he was wearing red at that moment, more awful, horrible red. John ran to their flat, cursing his shirt as if it was the thing that caused this, but then he saw Sherlock, pale skin, blue eyes, and there was relief.

Those first few months passed in a whirl of colour, and John knew it sounded cliché or stupid, but suddenly it was like he was _awake_ again, after what had felt like a long time of just treading water. No more grey for him, and John found that he didn't mind at all. If he was telling the truth, he never really liked grey much.

And then. And then.

The pool. The strong scent of chlorine in his nose, the weight of the bombs on his chest, and that damn pool, so clear and so blue. And the changing rooms, he hated those, because every other curtain it went blue, red, blue, red, blueredbluered, and he couldn't stand it, and he'd almost prefer the grey to this steam of colour.

But soon it was pale skin and blue eyes and dark hair once again, and he realised how much he didn't want to see that colour buried by red, so he seized Moriarty, who was just dark, dark, dark, with no redeeming colour to him.

The sniper's laser sights were red. He'd remember that until the day he died. They were red and they were covering Sherlock, and he felt like he might be sick, but at the same time he felt a sense of calm (he was a soldier, he'd been trained to be calm no matter what, even in the face of all that red), because he could feel the blue eyes glancing towards him every few seconds, making sure he was okay.

Snipers. Moriarty. Bombs. Gun. Boom.

Without a second thought, John tackled Sherlock into the pool, and the whole world was partially muted by the water, like a hand covering the speakers of a stereo. John felt pain and when he opened his eyes (the chlorine hurt, but he had to open them, he had to see, had to see _him_), he saw nothing but blue, and for a moment he panicked. He was being drowned by water and by colour, both of them suffocating him, and wasn't that the reason he'd tried to only see black and white anyway? So he'd never have to feel himself drowning in colour like this again.

_And then._

A hand, grabbing his own. John looked down and despite the events of that day (that week, that month, that life), he almost smiled. He squeezed the pale hand, and in the pool the colour swarmed around him, and for the smallest moment (before ambulances and investigations and sleepless nights) everything was clear.


End file.
